Use Sega Dreamcast to hack networks?

LAS VEGAS--Sega's defunct Dreamcast gaming console, which has long fallen out of favor with gamers, has surprisingly gained a new lease on life.

Two security researchers on Friday showed attendees at the Defcon hacking conference here how to reuse the small off-white boxes as stealthy network monitoring devices.

"When you only have a few minutes, you need to be able to drop something off that will let you access the network later," Aaron Higbee, a consultant with Foundstone and one of the two programmers who worked on the project, said of the Dreamcast consoles.

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Higbee and his programming partner, consultant Chris Davis of RedSiren Technologies, created the software to turn a Dreamcast into a network bug. Their software, when burned onto a CD-R and placed in a Dreamcast that has a broadband network adapter, allows the game console to give a hacker access to the network to which it is connected.

Rather than teaching hackers in the audience how to monitor others' networks, Higbee and Davis said the demonstration was intended to alert network administrators to the danger that many innocent-looking devices could pose to network security.